Startups Start Here

TechCrunch Disrupt is the world’s leading authority in debuting revolutionary startups, introducing game-changing technologies and discussing what’s top of mind for the tech industry’s key innovators. Disrupt gathers the best and brightest entrepreneurs, investors, hackers, and tech fans for on-stage interviews, the Startup Battlefield competition, a 24-hour Hackathon, Startup Alley, Hardware Alley, and After Parties.

On December 4th we’ll be taking over a unique new venue to bring you a TOA-style mix of cutting edge music, art, and technology at the impressive Alt Stralau 1. A former power station that has been converted into Berlin’s best kept secret, a unique and awe-inspiring space that really has to be seen to be believed. Immerse yourself in music, art, and tech in this exclusively curated location on the banks of the river spree, less than a kilometer from the TechCrunch Disrupt venue.

Tuesday 5 December

All times CET

9:00 am - 9:05 am

Opening Remarks

9:05 am - 9:25 am

Fireside Chat with Ida Tin (Clue)

The co-founder of Clue will discuss the future of female health and the role of data protection and security

The two founders will be on stage to discuss their roles in building Ethereum, the infrastructure they are currently building to drive mainstream adoption of blockchain, and their visions for the future of the space

9:45 am - 10:05 am

Fireside Chat with Stan Boland (FiveAI)

Hear from serial founder Stan Boland on how his autonomous driving system uses AI to take on Uber and other transportation services

Speakers & Judges

Zoe Adamovicz

Zoe Adamovicz

Zoe Adamovicz is the CEO and co-founder at Neufund. She is an experienced entrepreneur and occasional angel investor.

Zoe is passionate about building technology businesses that are impactful, positive and at the same time profitable and powerful. Prior to Neufund, she founded Xyo, a company that re-imagines how people discover apps, Priori Data (app store intelligence), and Concise Software which provides software development and engineering services.

She is also a mentor to the Gaza Sky Geeks, where she supports technology entrepreneurship in the challenging area of the Gaza Strip and helps introduce Blockchain. As an expert in technology entrepreneurship and venture capital, she has been following the blockchain space closely for several years. She decided to found Neufund when she realized the potential of blockchain for democratizing access to funding, and changing the VC game for good.

Natalya (Brikner) Bailey

Natalya Bailey is the CEO and a co-founder of Accion Systems, a company providing in-space propulsion for satellites and spacecraft. An Oregon native, Natalya moved to Cambridge to complete her doctorate in space propulsion at MIT where she helped invent the first working prototype of an ion engine technology for small satellites, which would become the first product at Accion. Prior to MIT, she invented a new chemical rocket technology that she turned into a space startup.
Natalya was a New England Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2017, a Boston Business Journal Woman to Watch in 2017, and named to Inc. Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in 2017 and Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2016. During graduate school, Natalya was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a NASA Ambassador to the US at the International Aeronautical Congress. In her free time, she works with the group YouthCITIES to show kids you can work on changing the world and having fun at the same time in STEM fields, and is also learning to program in Python with her husband.

Elina Berglund

Dr. Elina Berglund is the CTO and co-founder of Natural Cycles the fertility app which allows women to help prevent, plan and monitor pregnancies. As a top physicist, Elina was part of the team that discovered the Higgs boson at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, which lead to the Nobel Prize in physics in 2013. Following this success, Elina and her husband, CEO and co-founder of Natural Cycles, Dr Raoul Scherwitzl, were looking for an effective natural contraceptive. With few natural family planning options on the market, and a desire to avoid the side effects of the pill, Elina decided to apply her mathematical techniques to create an advanced algorithm that could accurately pinpoint when a woman was fertile - and this was turned into an app so all couples could benefit from their innovation. Elina and Raoul’s mission is to educate and empower women worldwide to take control of their fertility and future, championing a vision where every pregnancy brings happiness. Today, Natural Cycles is the first, and only, app to be certified as a contraception, and has been shown in clinical studies to be similarly effective as the contraceptive pill. The app has over 500,000 users in 161 countries.

Tom Blomfield

Tom is the CEO/Co-Founder of Monzo, a new kind of bank, designed for smartphones. Tom previously founded GoCardless, a fintech startup that has gone on to raise $25m. In 2013, he was nominated as one of the Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by the European Commission. He gives talks regularly about the future of banking and fintech.

Stan Boland

Stan Boland is co-founder and CEO of Five AI Inc., a venture-backed company developing a safe urban autonomous vehicle platform that it will deliver as a consumer service. Five AI’s solution was awarded a record $15M in grant money from the UK government, is partnered with Transport for London and recently raised a $18M Series A round.

Stan was co-founder and CEO of two of Europe’s most successful communications silicon and software companies, Element 14 and Icera, one bought by Broadcom and the other by NVIDIA, for an aggregate value of over $1 billion. Before that he was CEO at computer pioneer Acorn and a Board member at ARM. His early career includes spells at the aerospace firm Rolls-Royce and computer company ICL (now Fujitsu Services).

He graduated in Natural Sciences (Physics) from the University of Cambridge.

Tania Boler

Tania Boler is the co-founder and CEO of Elvie, a health and lifestyle brand developing smarter technology for women. Elvie takes the best of medical technology and turns it into premium consumer products that women love to use. The first product, Elvie Trainer, is a category-defining Kegel trainer that has more than 800 health professionals recommending it, was profitable within six months and is sold in major retailers, including Nordstrom and John Lewis. Together with her co-founder, Alex Asseily (co-founder, Jawbone), she has raised more than $10m in investment, most recently their $6m Series A round led by Octopus Ventures.

Tom Carter

Tom started exploring ultrasound technology during a study in the final year of his Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Bristol. He further developed the initial concept to form the basis of his PhD studies, during which time he published numerous papers and filed various patents. Recognising the technology’s commercial viability, Tom founded Ultrahaptics in November 2013.

Ultrahaptics has developed a unique technology that enables users to receive tactile feedback without needing to wear or touch anything. The technology uses ultrasound to project sensations through the air and directly onto the user. Users can ‘feel’ touch-less buttons get feedback for mid-air gestures, or interact with virtual objects.

Suranga Chandratillake

Suranga Chandratillake joined Balderton as a Partner in 2014. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer. Suranga founded blinkx, theintelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He then lead the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalisation in excess of $1Bn.

Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation - joining as an engineer in the Cambridge R&D team and ultimately serving as the company's US CTO in San Francisco.

Suranga has a MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge. He holds patents in the area of video discovery and online video advertising, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 and was chosen as one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders in 2009.

Rob Coneybeer

Rob co-founded Shasta Ventures in 2004, and is passionate about anything with an engine, including robots, satellites, and new modes of transportation. He is particularly interested in connected hardware, automotive, and The Internet of Things. At Shasta Ventures, his investments include Nest (acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014), Fetch Robotics, Eero, Vector Launch Systems, and Turo.

Spencer Crawley

Spencer Crawley is General Partner at firstminute capital. Launched in June 2017 and co-founded with Brent Hoberman, firstminute is a $85m global seed-stage fund, it is proud to count two institutional investors (Atomico and Tencent) and 28 founders of billion dollar technology businesses amongst its investors. Previous roles include Business Development at AppDirect (a San Francisco-based cloud commerce
platform provider), Investment Associate at DMC Partners (Goldman Sachs spin-out Special Opportunities fund), and Analyst in the Moscow office of Goldman Sachs (in the Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities division). Spencer studied History at Oxford University, did his MBA at INSEAD, and speaks fluent Russian and pidgin French.

Yann de Vries

Yann is a Partner at Atomico, based in London, where he works on the sourcing, evaluation, negotiation and due diligence of new investment opportunities.
Yann focuses on technology in advertising, logistics and transportation, and healthcare, and works with several Atomico portfolio companies including Jobandtalent, Teralytics, GoEuro and Lilium.
Yann joined Atomico from Redpoint e.ventures (RPeV), one of Brazil’s leading venture capital funds in Brazil, where he was a Managing Director and co-founder, leading investments in Farfetch and Gympass. Prior to starting RPeV, he was the head of corporate development for Cisco in EMEA and Latin America, and spent five years in Silicon Valley working in a start-up and venture capital. Yann began his career in engineering and operating roles at large tech companies across Europe and emerging markets, including Hong Kong and Egypt.
Yann holds an MSEE from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Yann is fluent in English and French, and proficient in German and Portuguese.

Jonas Drupel

Xavier Duportet

Xavier Duportet, 29, is a genome architect. He cofounded Eligo Bioscience in 2014, while doing his PhD in Synthetic Biology at MIT and INRIA. He raised $24M from Khosla Ventures and Seventure to develop a new generation of ultra-precise biotherapeutics to battle antibiotic-resistant bacteria and sculpt our microbiome using genetic engineering and CRISPR/Cas. He is an MIT TR35 and was elected French Innovator of the year by the MIT Technology Review in 2015. He was recently awarded French PhD-Entrepreneur of the year by the Foundation Norbert Segard, as one of the 40 under 40 Young Leaders in Europe, one of the 30 Under 30 by Forbes in 2017 and recently elected as a Technology Pioneer 2017 by the World Economic Forum.
Xavier is also the founder and president of Hello Tomorrow, a global non-profit organization, operating in 45 countries, which goal is to accelerate the development of deeptech startups that transform disruptive scientific technologies into products or services to solve societal and industrial challenges.

Marie Ekeland

Marie Ekeland is co-founder of daphni, a venture capital firm which invests in European tech startups and is supported by an online platform and an international community of experts. She began her career in 1997 at J.P. Morgan in New York as a computer scientist. Since 2000, Marie has been acting as a VC, first at CPR Private Equity, then, from 2005 to 2014 at Elaia Partners, leading investments in Criteo, Edoki Academy, Pandacraft, Teads, Wyplay, and Ykone. In 2012 she co-founded France Digitale, bringing together French VCs & entrepreneurs to make the French digital ecosystem thrive. She serves as a board member for Parrot, Showroomprive. Marie holds an engineering degree in mathematics and computer science from Paris Dauphine University as well as a master's degree in Economics from the Paris School of Economics.

Mona El Isa

Former star-trader at Goldman Sachs, promoted to Vice President by the age of 26 and made the “top 30 under 30” list in Trader Magazine in 2008 and Forbes Magazine in 2011 after profitably trading the 2008 and 2011 crashes. Moved to Geneva-based macro fund Jabre Capital in 2011, before deciding in 2014 that the future of finance lay in blockchain technology. She studied Economics & Statistics at the University College London.

Tugce Ergul

Tugce Ergul is a co-founder at Angel Labs, a global "investor accelerator" based in Silicon Valley. With a presence in more than 40 countries, Angel Labs is the world's first investor accelerator with a focus on supercharging investor ecosystems all around the world and building connected & educated investor groups. Angel Labs' goal is to make an impact on the liquidity side of the entrepreneurial equation, democratize venture capital and create smart capital for entrepreneurs.
Tugce has been and continues to be a national and international consultant and speaker on economic development, angel and venture financing for numerous countries and NGOs including the EU and OECD. Tugce has worked closely with several countries on their national entrepreneurship programs and with digital & media companies on their startup partnerships.Tugce is also the Chapter Lead of Girls in Tech Italy, an international organization focused on the empowerment, engagement and education of women in tech.
Tugce started her career as an investment banker and was working at Young Turk Ventures, a leading Turkish VC fund, before joining Startup Labs. She received her undergraduate degree in Finance from Sorbonne University with honors, and holds a master’s degree in International Management from Bocconi. Tugce is an active member of the European VC network and regularly speaks at events around the world regarding entrepreneurship, economic development and technology. She is fluent in English, French, Turkish, Azeri, Spanish, Italian and speaks some Portuguese. Tugce’s work has been featured in many publications such as USA Today, Forbes, and The Guardian.

Carlos Espinal

Carlos is Managing Partner at Seedcamp, Europe's seed fund, investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. Carlos hails originally from Latin America and joined Seedcamp in '09 following stints as an Associate at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and as an engineer for the Advanced Communications Technologies group of The New York Stock Exchange (SIAC). Carlos runs Seedcamp alongside Reshma Sohoni and is passionate about working closely with founders from their earliest stage, supporting them across everything from finding product-market-fit to setting fundraising milestones - he wrote a successful book on that very topic, The Fundraising Fieldguide. Carlos is frequently listed as one of the most influential voices in tech and VC. You can find Carlos podcasting at 'This Much I Know' where he interviews leading tech voices, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and operators as they share their stories with Seedcamp's global audience.

Jenny Fielding

Jenny Fielding is Managing Director at Techstars, where she runs the Internet of Things and Fintech focused programs. Prior to joining Techstars, Jenny headed up Corporate Venture and Digital Innovation at BBC Worldwide where she made strategic investments and led business development deals. She has also started several tech companies, most notably Switch-Mobile, a mobile VoIP company that was acquired in 2009. Jenny began her career as a lawyer, spent time in banking at JP Morgan and is a graduate of Columbia University.

Irena Goldenberg

Irena is a co-founder and General Partner at Highland Europe, which invests exclusively in growth stage software and internet businesses. Highland Europe’s portfolio includes eGym, GetYourGuide, Malwarebytes, MatchesFashion, and WeTransfer.

Irena joined Highland Capital Partners in Boston and moved from the US in 2007 to establish the firm’s European office alongside Fergal Mullen. She worked closely with Privalia (acquired by Vente-Privee for over $500M) and currently represents Highland Europe on the boards of eGym, Jampp, JUNIQE and WeTransfer.

Irena grew up in the Ukraine and Wisconsin, and speaks Russian and French. She attended MIT as an undergrad and Harvard for her MBA.

Kavita Gupta

Kavita is a recipient of UN social finance innovator award in 2015 for being an integral part of the founding green bond team at The World Bank. At ConsenSys, Kavita heads the unique VC-hedge fund, investing in next-generation blockchain technologies revolutionizing our current systems. Previously she has been running over $250M fund aligned with UN SDGs infusing capital in technologies providing first time or low-cost access around the world. She has set up innovative investment funds across East Africa, Middle East, South Asia and recently in the US for past 16 years through World Bank, IFC, McKinsey and The Schmidt Family office. She founded and headed World Bank's first innovation fund in 2010. She is on the board and advisor of various accelerators and foundations across the world like google accelerator social track, MIT Solve (Sr. Advisor), Vatican's Right Now foundation for impact investments, Mandela foundation etc. She is an MIT and Media lab alum.

Jan Hammer

Jan joined Index in 2010, and is a London-based partner, focusing on fintech and information/data services across all stages of growth.

He is one of Index Ventures’ leading fintech investors, working with the founders of Adyen, Credit Benchmark, Robinhood and TransferWise. In all, Index has backed more than two dozen fintech companies, with more than $400 million. Jan has also led Index investments and is on the boards of Beamery, Collibra, SafetyCulture and Silverfin.

Before he joined Index, Jan was at General Atlantic in London, where he worked on investments in Kaspersky Lab, Northgate Information Solutions and Torex Retail. He also worked in the M&A, TMT and Capital Markets divisions at Morgan Stanley. Jan is a graduate of Oxford University, and holds an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD.

Ole Harms

Ole Harms is CEO of MOIA. Ole has also worked at Volkswagen Group as Executive Director for New Business & Mobility Services and as Principal, Head of Sales and Marketing Practice (Volkswagen Consulting). Ole has also worked as a Consultant at Capgemini Consulting and Softlab, BMW Group.

James Harrison

James is CEO and co-founder of Sky-Futures. James is an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and former corporate strategist with Deloitte. Passionate about data, he has pioneered the creation and commercialisation of proprietary cloud based drone inspection software, the use of AI for automated inspection techniques, and built a drone inspection service offering across 4 continents globally. James has raised over US $15m from venture capital and corporate investors including MMC Ventures, Bristow and Mitsui & Co.

Keen on challenges, James has cycled 1,800 miles down the US west coast unsupported in 18 days and ran from London to Dover before cycling 1,400 miles unsupported to Gibraltar in 16 days, raising over £32k for various charities.

Cal Henderson

Cal Henderson is the co-founder and CTO of Slack. He led the technical development of Flickr from its founding, pioneered the use of APIs, and created the basis for oAuth and oEmbed, now used by YouTube, Twitter, and may others. Cal has a Computer Science degree from the University of Central England.

Forrest Iandola

Forrest Iandola completed a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, where his research focused on deep neural networks. His advances in scalable training and efficient implementation of deep neural networks led to the founding of DeepScale, where he is CEO. DeepScale is focused entirely on building perception and sensor fusion systems for autonomous vehicles, and DeepScale has a number of engagements with automakers and automotive suppliers.

Ana Izquierdo

Ana Izquierdo is Talent Clue’s CEO, the company that develops the recruiting software that helps recruiting teams to connect with the best talent and hire them faster, while delivering the best candidate experience.

She is an executive with extensive experience in the technology and entrepreneurial industry. In her professional career she has been a key piece in companies such as Hewlett-Packard, where she was Global Marketing Director (2004-2006) and Global Vice President of Enterprise Solutions (2008-2010).

In 2012, after quitting her job in Hewlett-Packard, she met Ivan Sala, Talent Clue’s founder. Together they decided to reconvert the company taking the business from service to product. The year 2013 was decisive in this new path since it was key to transform the whole company and launch the first version of the software.

Since then, Ana has led Talent Clue’s professionalization process which currently has half a hundred employees. The different departments have been established and tools and methodologies have been set. At the same time, she is continuously doing an important job seeking investment to ensure the growth of the company.

Other notable milestones of her careers is her participation in the creation of the investment fund Ellas 2.0, which offers consulting and accompaniment to women who want to build new business models in the digital economy sector. She also promoted Startup Weekend and has offered mentorship services to many associations

Samantha Jérusalmy

Samantha joined Elaia Partners in 2008. She began her career as a consultant at Eurogroup, a consulting firm specialized in organisation and strategy, within the Bank and Finance division. She then joined Clipperton Finance, a corporate finance firm dedicated to high-tech growth companies, before moving to Elaia Partners in 2008. She became an Investment Manager in 2011 then a Partner in 2014.

Brynne Kennedy

Brynne Kennedy is the CEO and Founder of MOVE Guides, the platform for the mobile workforce. MOVE Guides manages benefits, compliance and careers for employees who relocate, expatriate and travel frequently, a growing segment of the current and future workforce. Brynne founded MOVE Guides after being an extensive road warrior herself as an investment banker, and has raised more than $90 million dollars from top venture capital funds NEA and Notion Capital. Brynne is also the Founder of #Mobility4All, to which MOVE Guides contributes 1% of its revenue to help those fleeing poverty and conflict. Brynne is frequently recognized as a leading entrepreneur and thought leader. She has won Entrepreneur of the Year in the Women in IT Awards and Women of the Future Awards, London Business School’s Distinguished Entrepreneur Award and Management Today’s 35 Under 35. In 2017, she was named a Workforce Game Changer, one of 25 people changing the HR industry, and recognized with the Meritorious Service Award from the global mobility industry. Brynne is a former elite level gymnast for the United States. She speaks four languages and holds a B.A. in History from Yale University and an MBA from London Business School.

Thomas Korte

Thomas Korte is the founder of [AngelPad](http://angelpad.org), a seed-VC and Accelerator. His notable investments include Mopub (acq. Twitter), Adku (acq. Groupon), Spotsetter (acq. Apple), Postmates, Angellist, Coverhound, DroneDeploy, Periscope amongst 150 others - Thomas is always the first investor in a company.
Prior to founding AngelPad, Thomas joined Google’s Product Manager when it was just 7 people. He was responsible for all the Google Product Launches in Europe dating back to 2002. He spent 7 years at Headquarters and was at the origin of Adwords, AdSense, Google Maps and Google Shopping. Thomas is the author of two patents which are still a crucial part of Google search ranking and ads monetization products.

Videesha Kunkulagunta

Videesha is a non-resident digital policy fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the USA. She was a Principal and initial team member in newly formed venture capital management company at Redstone Digital based in Berlin investing in enterprise software. Prior to this she was the first Associate for PROfounders Capital a London based Venture Capital Fund. She transitioned into venture capital after working as an Entrepreneur in Residence at TalkTalk Plc reporting directly to the CEO and board. She gained substantial financial and operational experience at the start of her career working in South East Asia and London for Barclays Wealth.

Avid Larizadeh

Avid is a general partner at GV. Prior to GV, Avid cofounded
Boticca, a global marketplace for independent
brands of fashion accessories (acquired by Wolf &
Badger in 2015)

• Avid has been involved in the startup ecosystem as a
developer, product manager, founder, investor, and
adviser since 1998

• Avid worked at Accel Partners; held product
management roles at Tellme Networks, eBay, and
Skype

• Avid leads Code.org and the Hour of Code in the UK.
She is on the board of trustees of Founders4Schools
and serves on the Harvard Business School European
Advisory Board. Avid has been recognized as a Young
Global Leader by the World Economic Forum

Ijad Madisch

Ijad Madisch (36) is co-founder and CEO of ResearchGate, the professional network that connects the world of science and opens research up to all. Following his own frustrations as a researcher isolated in his lab, Ijad founded ResearchGate in 2008 together with his friends, fellow physician Dr. Sören Hofmayer and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. ResearchGate has since grown to more than 12 million scientists around the world. Ijad earned his doctorate in the field of virology, while also studying computer science on the side. He spent several years working as a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, focusing on tissue engineering and radiology. Under Ijad's leadership, ResearchGate has attracted a group of renowned investors, including Bill Gates, Benchmark, Wellcome Trust and Founders Fund.

Christophe Maire

Christophe F. Maire is the Founding Partner and CEO of Atlantic Labs, a Berlin-based seed investor dedicated to identifying and investing in innovative digital startup companies. In the last 20+ years, Christophe has built an international track record both as a founder; including gate5 (sold first to Nokia and later developed into HERE and sold to the German automotive industry) and Plazes.com (also sold to Nokia); and as a farsighted investor named best “European Seed Investor” by Techcrunch two years running. Exited investments include Brands4Friends (eBay), Readmill (Dropbox); StudiVZ, Fyber and Plista. Recent investments led by Atlantic Labs include Medigo, Clue, Jodel, and Campanda, amongst others. Christophe remains actively involved in all his investments, including as a board member of Soundcloud, EyeEm, and Monoqi, and an active promoter of the Berlin startup ecosystem.

Frédéric Mazzella

Since pioneering the idea of BlaBlaCar in 2004, Fred has led the company to become the world’s largest long-distance carpooling community. As a branding and communications enthusiast, Fred has built a global brand whilst relentlessly spreading the word about the virtues of carpooling. Fred carries BlaBlaCar’s vision of a people-powered travel network enabled by trust and technology, and is passionate about high social impact solutions. As a regular speaker at leading international conferences and in the media, Fred sheds light on the fast changing mobility landscape, entrepreneurship, global marketplaces and building trust in online communities.

Prior to founding BlaBlaCar, Fred held the role of scientific researcher at NASA (USA) and NTT (Japan). He holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford and a Masters in Physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure (France). Fred is also an accomplished classical pianist. Tweet him @mazaic.

Andy McLoughlin

Andy is a Partner with SoftTech VC, one of Silicon Valley's most active seed stage venture capital firms where he primarily invests in SaaS, vertical industry solutions, and developer tools.

Prior to joining SoftTech, Andy was co-founder of London-headquartered Huddle, an enterprise SaaS collaboration platform that was acquired in 2017. Andy’s angel investment portfolio includes innovative B2B products like Pipedrive, Intercom, Apiary (acquired by Oracle), Buffer and Bugsnag, as well as consumer services including Postmates, Secret Escapes, HER, and Calm.

Andy co-founded and is the US Trustee for the Founders Pledge, a charity that promotes altruism in early stage entrepreneurs by enabling them to donate a percentage of personal proceeds following an exit. He was awarded an OBE in the 2015 Queen’s birthday honors list for services to the UK technology industry. Follow him on twitter @bandrew

Christian Meermann

Christian is a Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures. After some years at The Boston Consulting Group, Christian joined Zalando (FSE:ZAL) as their first CMO. Christian was responsible for building up and managing the group’s marketing efforts (i.e. performance marketing, CRM, PR, TV and brand marketing). He then joined the Management Board of Peek&Cloppenburg and was responsible for the company’s online business. He holds a diploma in business administration from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. He has lived and worked in the U.S., Spain, Brazil and South Africa. Christian gets excited about founders that are as passionate about execution as they are about building a strong and sustainable brand. He has a particular focus on logistics and mobility as well a food technology companies.

Martin Mignot

Martin is based in London, where he focuses on startups in large markets like food, transportation, finance, health and SME, developing must-have products that get exponentially better with each new user.

He has worked with the founders of many such businesses, including BlaBlaCar and Deliveroo. He also serves on the board of Drivy, KRY, Rad, TheFamily and Trainline (following the acquisition of Captain Train). He was also on the board at SwiftKey until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2016, and led the Seed round in hosted search API company Algolia. Most of his initial investments are Seed and Series A.

Before coming to Index, Martin was in the TMT team at UBS Investment Bank, and co-founded the beauty subscription business Boudoir Prive (acquired by Joliebox/Birchbox), as well as student web radio service rsp.fm.

He divides his time primarily between London, Paris and the Nordics where he is on the board of Stockholm-based digital health company KRY.

Christian Nagel

Dr. Christian Nagel is Co-Founder and Partner of Earlybird. Christian has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and investment experience. He was Chairman of the Board of Tipp24 AG (Prime Standard Frankfurt Exchange: TIM) and Interhyp AG (Prime Standard Frankfurt Exchange: IYP), which returned more than 50x the original Earlybird investment. Up till the trade sale to SMSC (NASDAQ: SMSC) he also served on the board of BridgeCo AG. He is currently on the boards of CrossEngage (Berlin), Cashboard (Berlin), N26 (Berlin), Smava (Berlin) and Tradico (Munich). Prior to founding Earlybird in 1997, Christian, together with a group of investors, acquired various companies from the Treuhandanstalt (the former East-German state holding) and gained operational experience. He was a shareholder and an Executive Director of HNP Präzisionsteile GmbH & Co. KG, SMB Industrieholding GmbH, DH Industrieholding Hohenthurm GmbH and a number of other subsidiary companies of these holding companies. Previously, Christian worked as an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Co. Inc. focusing on restructuring, strategy and M & A projects within various industries. He holds a Diplom-Wirtschaftsingenieur degree (Industrial Engineering, MSc equivalent) from the Technical University of Hamburg, specializing in process engineering and a PhD degree in management from the University of St. Gallen.

Alicia Navarro

Alicia Navarro is CEO and Co-founder of Skimlinks, having evolved the business out of a previous social shopping startup. Skimlinks is a leading content monetization technology, helping thousands of publishers all over the world to earn money from their content in seamless simple way.

Alicia's vision for Skimlinks is to see online publishers be rewarded for the role they play in creating purchase intent. She achieved this by removing the technical and administrative complexities that hamper would-be affiliates, and helping turn affiliate marketing into a mainstream ubiquitous revenue model for blogs, editorial sites, forums, and other content platforms.

Alicia worked for over 10 years in internet applications, designing and launching mobile and internet-based applications in Australia and the UK. She has a Bachelor of Information Technology and the University Medal for Computing Sciences from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Ciarán O'Leary

Ciarán O’Leary is a co-founder of BlueYard Capital, a $120m early stage fund based in Berlin that invests in founders decentralizing markets, empowering users and liberating data. Ciarán's investments include Wunderlist, Carto, BigchainDB, Vectary, deepstream and others from Palo Alto to Bratislava. Prior to founding BlueYard, Ciarán set-up Earlybird Venture Capital's Berlin office as a partner and before that was at The Carlyle Group.

Johannes Reck

Johannes graduated as Master of Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in January 2009 with highest honors. While still in university, he co-founded GetYourGuide with the vision to empower travelers to find and book attractions & activities anywhere in the world. GetYourGuide has since become the leading booking platform for attractions & activities, serving millions of travelers per year. GetYourGuide is headquartered in Berlin and employs more than 300 people in offices across the globe. The company has raised a total of $175M from investors such as Battery Ventures, KKR and Spark Capital.

Timo Rein

Timo Rein, co-founder and CEO of Pipedrive an activity-based simple sales management tool that helps over 60,000 sales teams to get more organised and focused, has 15+ years of experience as a salesman, sales manager and software entrepreneur. Timo is passionate about sales tactics and has always had a knack for reading people.

As CEO, Timo is responsible for setting long-term product vision and business-critical strategy goals. While Pipedrive has grown to over 300 employees working from different locations in New York, Lisbon, London and Estonia, Timo is still closely involved in the hiring process of new people and helps to find the best possible professional and personal fit between the new employee, the job or the rest of the team.

Prior to founding Pipedrive Timo worked for eleven years as one of the three partners at Vain & Partners, a sales consulting and training company with clientele like PwC, Coca Cola and Nissan. Timo’s goal was to create programs that would help different companies and people sell more, and manage better. Timo worked with about 30-40 companies, and 500 people each year to figure out ways to better sales results in different industries.

Timo also considers selling books door-to-door for 3 months in 2000 (in California, US) with Southwestern Comp, crucial to his sales experience that was eventually put to use as the architecture of Pipedrive. He was in top 1% performers among 4,000 sales people and while he never thought he was the type of person who could sell, he pulled off 14-hour-long days, 6 days a week, and 12 weeks in a row.

Timo’s first full time job as a university student was a recruiter when he worked for four years interviewing people applying for managerial and specialist positions in different companies. Timo studied psychology at Tartu University, and completed his BA studies in 1999.

Mounia Rkha

Mounia started her career in the VC industry in 2008 with Ventech. She moved in 2011 to Morocco to co-found and manage Mydeal, one of the first group buying sites in Maghreb. Back to Paris, she joined Schibsted Growth, the corporate venture fund of the Schibsted Group (owner of the successful classifieds site LeBonCoin). She joined ISAI in june 2015 to manage the Seed Club activity. Mounia is also a co-founder of StartHer, an organization that aims at promoting entrepreneurship by women.

Neil Rimer

Neil co-founded Index Ventures in Geneva in 1996.

His vision was to support the most ambitious entrepreneurs, bringing Silicon Valley-style investing to Europe at a time when “venture capital” was still a new term outside the US. As he recalled in a Financial Times interview: “We started every meeting with a slide that was literally ‘What is VC?’”

20 years on, while staying true to its European roots, Index has become one of the world’s leading venture capital firms, with principal offices in London and San Francisco. So far, the firm has raised $5.6 billion and has more than 160 companies in its portfolio.

Today, Neil works with entrepreneurs on both sides of the Atlantic, among them the founders of Deliveroo, Funding Circle, Roblox and Typeform. He previously led Index investments in companies including Betfair, Climate, Supercell and Trello.

Born in Montreal, Neil graduated in History and Economics at Stanford, and gained an MBA from Harvard Business School. He spent four years with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, and joined Index Securities in 1990 – the predecessor to Index Ventures. Neil is also on the board of the non-profit, non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch.

In his FT interview, Neil summed up his approach to investment. “We all exercise our brains as cynics every day, we’re all experts in what happens when things go wrong. But for me, the more valuable exercise is: What happens if it does work?”

Mark Schmitz

Mark is a Partner and MD at Lakestar, a venture capital firm that invests globally into technology companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs. Investments of the group include Skype, Facebook, airbnb, Spotify, Oscar, and GoEuro. Mark also serves as board member at portfolio companies Teralytics, Seerene, and CrossLend. Prior to Lakestar, Mark worked with international law firm Linklaters LLP and Private Equity and Venture Capital boutique Pöllath + Partners in Munich. He completed his legal and business studies at Bucerius Law School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business with a specialization in corporate and tax law and is a recipient of the German Bundestag/United States Congress scholarship program.

Keld van Schreven

Keld is cofounder of KR1 UKs leading crypto investment public company. First investors in Melonport, Funfair, Rocketpool and Etherisc. Keld is advisor to IXLedger and previously cofounder of several web startups since 1995. www.kryptonite1.co

Henri Seydoux

Henri Seydoux founded Parrot in 1994 and has been its CEO ever since its inception. Parrot is today one of the major players in the civil drone market. Self-taught, Henri started his career in 1978 as a trainee and then as a journalist for the magazine Actuel. In 1982, he joined the company SSCI as a developer and then, the company Micro Archi. In 1986, he created BSCA, a company that specialized in rendering 3D computer images and served as CEO until 1990. In 1991, along with three other partners, he founded Christian Louboutin, a luxury shoes company.

Ulrich Spiesshofer

Ulrich Spiesshofer was appointed Chief Executive Officer in September 2013 and has been a member of the Executive Committee since 2005. From January 2010 to September 2013, Mr. Spiesshofer was the Executive Committee member responsible for the Discrete Automation and Motion division. He joined ABB in November 2005, as the Executive Committee member responsible for Corporate Development. From 2002 until he joined ABB, he was senior partner and global head of operations practice at Roland Berger AG (Switzerland). From 1991 to 2002, he held various management positions with A.T. Kearney Ltd. and its affiliates. Mr. Spiesshofer was born in 1964 and is a Swiss and German citizen.

Valentin Stalf

Born in Vienna, Valentin studied Accounting & Finance (M.A. HSG) at the University of St. Gallen, Sophia University in Tokyo and the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration. During his studies he worked in a number of fields including Strategy Consulting and Investment Banking/Mergers & Acquisition. Before he founded N26 together with Maximilian Tayenthal, he was with the Internet Incubator Rocket Internet as Entrepreneur in Residence and involved in building different companies

Jutta Steiner

Dr Steiner is the co-founder of Parity Technologies. She previously served as Chief of Security for the Ethereum Foundation, overseeing security audit and integration prior to the launch of the public blockchain in 2015. Jutta also co-founded Project Provenance, where she pioneered the use of blockchain technology to foster transparency in supply chains. Jutta has helped found and advise a number of additional organisations, including GridSingularity; a decentralized energy data exchange platform hosting a range of applications to facilitate energy data analysis and benchmarking, investment decisions and smart grid management – a key enabler for a sustainable shift from a traditional to a distributed energy market model. Dr Steiner holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Bonn, following which she started her career as a consultant for McKinsey.

Nikolay Storonsky

From his own frustrations with the traditional banks, Nikolay founded Revolut to reinvent the way people spend and send money abroad. From it's humble beginnings as a foreign exchange app, Revolut has since transformed into Europe's leading challenger bank, with over 1 million customers, $6.5 billion in transactions and over £120 million saved in fees.

Ida Tin

Ida is the CEO and co-founder of the leading female health tracking app, Clue. Born in Copenhagen, Ida graduated from Denmark's prestigious creative business school, the KaosPilots. A lifelong entrepreneur, she previously led motorcycle tours around the world and published a book about her experience, “Direktøs” which became a Danish bestseller. She is recognized for coining the term "Femtech" to describe the sector of technology focused on improving women's health.

William Tunstall-Pedoe

William Tunstall-Pedoe is a British entrepreneur focused on world-changing products powered with Artificial Intelligence and other deep technology. He is based in Cambridge, UK and London but is also frequently in Toronto and both coasts of the US. His biggest recent achievement was founding the British company Evi, the AI platform acquired by Amazon and used to create Alexa. Today William focuses on advising and investing in other startups. He has personally invested in more than 40 early-stage technology startups, including Ada Health, where he is an investor and advisor.

William is a full member of Cambridge Angels and a fellow of the Creative Destruction Lab in Toronto.

Robert Vis

Since founding MessageBird in 2011, Robert has been at the frontlines of disrupting the trillion dollar telecom industry. Bootstrapped and profitable from inception, MessageBird provides cloud communications APIs, including SMS, Voice and Chat, that connect global enterprises to their customers worldwide. In 2017 they raised a $60 million Series A led by Accel in San Francisco with participation from Atomico in London, marking the largest Series A of any European software firm or Y Combinator alum to date.

A true entrepreneur at heart, Robert believes in employee empowerment, staying scrappy, moving fast and breaking things. Prior to MessageBird, he was co-founder and CEO of Zaypay.com which primarily focused on driving mobile payments into 50+ countries, enabling 1.5bln users to pay for virtual goods through their mobile phones (sold to Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), later Velti (VELT Nasdaq), now mGage in 2011).

Lucas von Cranach

Lucas von Cranach Football has always been Lucas von Cranach's passion. He was a supporter of 1. FC Cologne long before he was set to become an entrepreneur in the football industry. It all started in the early days of the smartphone when Lucas realized that there was no service providing fans with live scores and results. He started out with a simple SMS-service delivering live scores to the fans’ pockets. Only a few years later this service has turned into one of the most successful football-apps around the globe connecting more than 20 million fans.

Gavin Wood

Dr Wood was the Chief Technology Officer and co-­founder of the Ethereum Project. He is the co-designer of the Ethereum Protocol, author of its formal specification, and is the creator and author of the first functional Ethereum implementation. Dr Wood designed and stewarded the Solidity language, was the project chief of the IDE, and designed and implemented the Whisper protocol. He has pushed “state-of­-the-art” in analysis tools and programming languages, as well as co­-founded several technology start­ups. Dr Wood has presented to numerous audiences around the world, from keynotes at regional technology conferences, to musings on the future of legal systems at Harvard. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of York. His new initiative is the Polkadot protocol, which will connect public and private blockchains so that they can inter-operate. This ambitious project could make it frictionless for corporations that wish to work in private blockchains to connect with public blockchains.

Gavin is founder and current director of Parity Technologies Ltd. He has pushed the state­-of­-the-­art in analysis tools and programming languages, as well as co-­founded several technology start­ups, including Grid Singularity and Ethereum. He is the co-­designer of the Ethereum Protocol and author of its formal specification, he created and wrote the first functional Ethereum implementation, designed and stewarded the Solidity language, was the project chief of the IDE, and designed and implemented the Whisper protocol.

Tim M. Zagar

Tim Mitja Zagar is a co-founder and the CEO of the ICONOMI, the first global decentralized platform to manage digital assets, based on Ethereum technology. He started working on blockchain projects in 2013 with the goal of connecting the crypto field to the existing banking world. Prior to the ICONOMI, Tim was a co-founder of Cashila, the first bitcoin company with EU regulator approval to be registered as a financial institution. Soon he realized that more and more users want to invest in digital assets and not just paying with crypto currencies. For this reason he and his colleague Jani Valjavec founded the ICONOMI, a digital assets management platform that enables access to a variety of digital assets with the possibility of combining them and trading with them.

ALEXANDER ZOSEL

In 1981, aged just 15, he construed and built one of the first skateboard halfpipes in Germany together with a few friends. Whilst studying for his degree in civil engineering he developed his first patent and in his capacity as “Serial Entrepreneur” and self made man he is now an entrepreneur through and through. With his enthusiasm and his firm belief in his vision regarding mobility of the future in the third dimension he brings much innovative buzz to the whole team

Speaker Submissions are now closed.

OFF THE RECORD SESSIONS

NEW for 2017 is our Off The Record (OTR) sessions – moderated Q&A sessions and networking receptions with top founders and investors making waves within a certain hot category. At Disrupt Berlin we will hold Off The Record sessions in the following categories: Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Cryptocurrencies/Blockchain, Biotech, Robotics and Fintech. These sessions will be open to all regular Disrupt Berlin ticket holders but won’t be recorded or live streamed – you have to be there to take part!

Attendees

TESTIMONIALS

Launching on Disrupt helped us rise above the noise, and put us on the radar of customers, investors, and talent early on. If you're launching a new company or product, this is where you want to be.

Cathy Han

Founder, 42 - Disrupt NY 2014

We struggled like crazy to get our first hundred customers. Since Disrupt, we sign up about 5000 new customers a day.

Matthew Prince

CEO, Cloudflare - Disrupt SF 2014

TechCrunch Disrupt was a great stage to launch Scout RFP. It allowed us to network with big name organizations like Dell, USAA, InBev, First Data, and Verizon. It introduced our product to high enterprise worth individuals who were open-minded to new software and open to meeting with us post conference.

Stan Garber

President, Scout RFP - Disrupt SF 2014

Disrupt not only put us on the radar of international news, it also was a one of a kind experience meeting like minded entrepreneurs ready to disrupt entire industries! Impossible is nothing - that's the spirit.

Valentin Stalf

Founder, Number26 - Disrupt London 2014

STARTUP BATTLEFIELD

Startup Battlefield brings the world's top early stage startups together on one stage to compete for the coveted Disrupt Cup, a $50,000 prize, and the attention of media and investors. Since appearing on the TechCrunch stage, Battlefield alumni have collectively raised over $6.6 billion. The judges include TechCrunch editors as well as top VCs and entrepreneurs, and past winners include names like Dropbox, Mint, Yammer, Zenefits, and many more. Participation is free and open. Applications are open now until September 25 - apply today!

STARTUP ALLEY

At the heart of the conference floor lies Startup and Hardware Alley where hundreds of early-stage companies showcase their talent and technology to attendees, investors and members of the press. With different companies exhibiting each day, Startup Alley hosts hundreds of exciting companies, many of which are launching for the first time. Don't miss the "Wild Card Winner" which is selected by a combination of audience and editorial votes and is awarded a place in the Startup Battlefield competition.

CRUNCHMATCH

CrunchMatch is a program designed to introduce investors to entrepreneurs, based on curated analysis of which startups fit with a given investor’s profile. The goal is to improve the odds that investors and entrepreneurs make a super promising contact. The program is free to qualifying Disrupt attendees.

How it works: When an investor or a Startup Alley company registers for Disrupt, they receive an invitation to complete a questionnaire about their interests. When the TechCrunch team finds a strong match, we will propose that the parties connect at Disrupt. We help curate a meeting time and we provide a private meeting space.

Sign Up For Event Updates

FAQs

If you don’t find the answer to your question there, email us at events@techcrunch.com for general event questions OR at startupalley@techcrunch.com for Startup Alley related questions.

TICKETS

General Admission Ticket

€1190 (inclusive of VAT)

General Admission Conference Pass for all days

For Investors, Technologists and Later Stage Startups (more than 2 years old)

Startup Alley Exhibitor Package - MONDAY

SOLD OUT

€1190 (inclusive of VAT) for 2 tickets to Disrupt Berlin

Includes 1 day of exhibition in Startup Alley on Monday 4 December and 2 General Admission Conference Passes - Eligible to participate in the Wild Card spot for Startup Battlefield

One package per startup PLEASE NOTE: Startup Alley companies must be less than 2 years old and have less than $2.5M in funding (does not apply to Hardware companies)

Startup Alley Exhibitor Package - TUESDAY

SOLD OUT

€952 (inclusive of VAT) for 3 tickets to Disrupt Berlin

Includes 1 day of exhibition in Startup Alley on Tuesday 5 December and 3 General Admission Conference Passes

One package per startup PLEASE NOTE: Startup Alley companies must be less than 2 years old and have less than $2.5M in funding (does not apply to Hardware companies)

Refunds/Cancellations

DISCLOSURE: Ticket purchases cancelled by October 15, 2017 are subject to a €250 cancellation handling fee. Tickets cancelled October 15 and later are not eligible for a refund for any reason. Lost name badges at the conference are subject to a €300 replacement fee.

Student Tickets

Students currently enrolled in a college or university program are eligible for reduced admission (€238 inclusive of VAT) to Disrupt Berlin. To apply for this rate, apply here.

Non-Profit Organization Tickets

Current full-time employees of non-profit organizations with 501(c) 3 designations can apply for the Non-Profit ticket rate to Disrupt Berlin for €535.50 (inclusive of VAT). To apply for the discount, you must email government@techcrunch.com from your organizations email address and a copy of your organization’s 501(c) 3 designation.

Government/Military Tickets

Current full-time employees of federal, state or local government agencies, current full-time employees of international government agencies and active military employees only can receive an attendee ticket to Disrupt Berlin for €535.50 (inclusive of VAT). To qualify for the discount, you must email government@techcrunch.com from a valid .gov email address with a copy of your current, valid government ID. Additionally you must present your current, valid government identification card during registration check-in at Disrupt Berlin. If you are unable to provide valid government identification at the event, you will be charged the general admission rate of €1200 (inclusive of VAT).

The government discount cannot be combined with any other discount offers.

Government contractors, including contractors working on government “Cost Reimbursable Contracts”, are not eligible for the government discount.